Gyroscopes are sensors that measure angular rate and angular orientation. Gyroscopes are being adopted in many applications including consumer electronics, machines, robots, automotive, vessels, and airplanes, and space satellites. Recent advance in micro electromechanical system (MEMS) technology allowed the manufacturing of micro scale gyroscopes at low cost with sufficient accuracy. They are very useful for applications such as game controllers or smart phones as well as stabilization of cameras, factory machines, and cars.
However, accuracy of current micro gyroscopes cannot meet the requirements of many other applications. Examples of those include the navigation of humans, autonomous cars, and drones in regions where no GPS signal is available. Navigation requires precise accurate position sensing, which is highly difficult. This is because an error in the position calculated by inertial sensors grows nearly exponentially with time. Stabilization of cameras, cars, or machines require only rotation rate data, whose error does not grow over time. Therefore, navigational applications require a micro gyroscope with several orders of magnitude higher accuracy than stabilization applications.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.